WINSTON-SALEM AIR SHOW PROVIDES
REAL-WORLD EXPERIENCE
FOR UNCSA FILM STUDENTS

WINSTON-SALEM – This weekend’s
Winston-Salem Air Show will provide a
unique opportunity for six student
filmmakers from the University of North
Carolina School of the Arts (UNCSA).

UNCSA School of Filmmaking faculty
member Wade Wilson will take his custom
sound effects design class to the air
show on Sunday to record sounds that
eventually might be heard in major
motion pictures.

The Winston-Salem Air Show is Sept.
9-11, today through Sunday, at Smith
Reynolds Airport. Among the aircraft
that students could experience at the
100th anniversary air show
are:

·
F104 Starfighter, a Lockheed
single-engine, high-performance
fighter/bomber used by the U.S. Air
Force, NASA and the Air National Guard;·
F4U Corsair, a carrier-capable fighter
built by Chance Vought and used by the
U.S. Navy and Marine Corps during World
War II and the Korean War;

·
A-4 Skyhawk, built by Douglas in 1956
and used by the Navy and Marines during
the Vietnam War for ground attack; and

·
AD4 Skyraider, a single-seat,
piston-powered, propeller-driven attack
aircraft built by Douglas and used
extensively from the 1940s through the
1980s by the Air Force, Navy and
Marines.

“It’s a great opportunity,” Wilson said.
“You don’t usually have access to these
big military jets to record sound
effects, unless you have a big budget
and can afford to go out and rent one.”

Photos courtesy
Winston-Salem Air Show

Wilson is a sound designer, supervising sound editor,
musician and actor whose sound design work on THE
PERFECT STORM garnered an Academy Award nomination. His
other film credits include
SHREK, MADAGASCAR, SHARK TALE, MYSTIC RIVER, ELF, and
UNFAITHFUL.

Wilson
joined faculty of UNCSA’s School of Filmmaking in 2008,
recruited by Dean Jordan Kerner, a veteran Hollywood
producer (THE SMURFS,
CHARLOTTE’S WEB, SNOW DOGS, INSPECTOR GADGET, UP CLOSE &
PERSONAL, THE MIGHTY DUCKS TRILOGY, FRIED GREEN TOMATOES
and more) who has championed real-world
experiences for student filmmakers through his new
“shadows” internship program.

“It
is very important in our eyes that students are exposed
to the film industry in a working manner,” Wilson said.
“It is important that they learn the exact processes
used by professionals in the industry, and then mimic
those processes.”

Recording sound effects on location is a major component
of a sound designer’s career, Wilson said. “These
students are going to be doing exactly what I would be
doing as a sound designer on any film. These jets are
going to be loud, and the students have to figure out
which microphones will work best at what frequency.”

The third- and fourth-year students, who are picture
editing and sound design majors, will spend the
following week “mastering” the sounds they record, and
the resulting clips will be added to the school’s
library of more than 100,000 sound clips.

The clips will also be provided to Soundelux, a
Hollywood post-production sound company which holds the
world’s most extensive and notable sound effects
library. Last year, Soundelux donated some of that
library to the School of Filmmaking.

“These recordings could definitely end up in major
feature films,’’ Wilson said.

The University of North Carolina School of the Arts is
the first state-supported, residential school of its
kind in the nation. Established as the North Carolina
School of the Arts by the N.C. General Assembly in 1963,
UNCSA opened in Winston-Salem (“The City of Arts and
Innovation”) in 1965 and became part of the University
of North Carolina system in 1972. More than 1,100
students from high school through graduate school train
for careers in the arts in five professional schools:
Dance, Design and Production (including a Visual Arts
Program), Drama, Filmmaking, and Music. UNCSA is the
state’s only public arts conservatory, dedicated
entirely to the professional training of talented
students in the performing, visual and moving image
arts. For more information, visit
www.uncsa.edu.